SUSAN BRENNER

For quite some time now, through several bodies of work I have been responding to the rapid pace of change in the world and the anxiety often joined with excitement that such change produces. I’ve been making images that deal with the flux and flow of things, with a world made strange and all that implies. Some viewers see the work as dystopian while others have commented on its optimism. I see both. I start with chaos, but my process leads toward order and beauty. I hold these things in tension with each other.

-Susan Brenner

AVAILABLE WORKS

Susan Brenner is a Charlotte-based artist who uses a variety of media to make statements about our world today, as well as the human condition. She combines photography and painting to create series of work dealing with concepts such as fluidity, migration, movement and societal change.  Brenner explores rich textures, abstract forms and the evolution of movement in her paintings and prints; she is constantly exploring and experimenting, but sometimes revisiting earlier phases, or even coming full circle.  Brenner is facile with rendering and expressing an aliveness in her art, as she finds ways to explore the mysteries of the world while fearlessly plunging into unknown territory and experimenting with ways in which to compose and express individuality.

 

Recently retired as a Professor of Art at UNC-Charlotte, Brenner remains an active creative force in the local and national art scene.  She recently completed public art for the Charlotte, NC light rail extension. These multi-colored glass panel walls, inspired by the branches of Charlotte’s tree canopy, cast shifting colored shadows in the elevator/stairway towers at two stations.  Brenner has exhibited at the LACE Annuale Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, the Columbia Museum of Art, the North Carolina Museum of Art, and the Mint Museum of Art.